Mark Copelovitch
@mcopelov.bsky.social
Professor of Political Science & Public Affairs & Director of European Studies, University of Wisconsin - Madison. International political economy, international relations, & international finance. 🇺🇸 & 🇪🇺 politics & economic policy. Tradeoffs in everything.
Hey there. Welcome! Hope all is well. Follow people. Post. There's no algorithm here, so there are some startup costs but it's worth it.
November 10, 2025 at 7:41 PM
Hey there. Welcome! Hope all is well. Follow people. Post. There's no algorithm here, so there are some startup costs but it's worth it.
The only thing special about us is our uniquely bad electoral & legislative institutions. We could be just like every other normal actual democracy. Sure, we'd have all their problems. Every one of them would be vastly better than "the fascists have governing majorities/control of every institution"
If we were an actual democracy, our politics would look ~like 👇: the center-left at ~1/3 of the vote, the center-right ~1/3, the fascists <1/5 (& with no chance of the exec/majorities), & a few small parties. Yes, we’d have tons of problems (see 🇩🇪), but none of them would be “will democracy end?”
November 10, 2025 at 7:02 PM
The only thing special about us is our uniquely bad electoral & legislative institutions. We could be just like every other normal actual democracy. Sure, we'd have all their problems. Every one of them would be vastly better than "the fascists have governing majorities/control of every institution"
If we were really going to "run the government like a business," Costco is the actual model we'd want to follow.
Let's again stipulate that the government is not a business & the whole idea it should run like one is a dumb category error. But if anyone was actually serious about running the government like a business & eliminating waste, the model would be Costco & not a single person/firm from Silicon Valley.
Costco is a really popular subject for business-success case studies but I feel like business guys kinda lose interest when the upshot of the study is like "just operate with scrupulous integrity in all facets and levels of your business for four decades" and not some easy-to-fix gimmick
November 10, 2025 at 6:51 PM
If we were really going to "run the government like a business," Costco is the actual model we'd want to follow.
I think it is important to acknowledge 1) what will actually work to fix political problems; and 2) the incredibly low probability of those things actually happening. Far too much of our political discourse focuses on Unicorns that fail on both dimensions.
November 10, 2025 at 6:04 PM
I think it is important to acknowledge 1) what will actually work to fix political problems; and 2) the incredibly low probability of those things actually happening. Far too much of our political discourse focuses on Unicorns that fail on both dimensions.